Power Through Repose eBook

I am aware that this standard is ideal; but it is
not impossible to approach it,—­to come
at least much nearer to it than we do now, when the
physical movements on the stage are such, that one
wants to listen to most operas with closed eyes.

We have considered artistic expression when the human
body alone is the instrument. When the body is
merely a means to the use of a secondary instrument,
a primary training of the body itself is equally necessary.

A pianist practises for hours to command his fingers
and gain a touch which will bring the soul from his
music, without in the least realizing that so long
as he is keeping other muscles in his body tense,
and allowing the nervous force to expend itself unnecessarily
in other directions, there never will be clear and
open channels from his brain to his fingers; and as
he literally plays with his brain, and not with his
fingers, free channels for a magnetic touch are indispensable.

To watch a body give to the rhythm of the music
in playing is most fascinating. Although the
motion is slight, the contrast between that and a
pianist stiff and rigid with superfluous tension is,
very marked, and the difference in touch when one
relaxes to the music with free channels has been very
clearly proved. Beside this, the freedom in mechanism
which follows the exercises for arms and hands is
strikingly noticeable.

With the violin, the same physical equilibrium of
motion must be gained; in fact it is equally necessary
in all musical performance, as the perfect freedom
of the body is always necessary before it can reach
its highest power in the use of any secondary instrument.

In painting, the freer a body is the more perfectly
the mind can direct it. How often we can see
clearly in our minds a straight line or a curve or
a combination of both, but our hands will not obey
the brain, and the picture fails. It does not
by any means follow that with free bodies we can direct
the hand at once to whatever the brain desires, but
simply that by making the body free, and so a perfect
servant of the mind, it can be brought to obey the
mind in a much shorter time and more directly, and
so become a truer channel for whatever the mind wishes
to accomplish.

In the highest art, whatever form it may take, the
law of simplicity is perfectly illustrated.

It would be tiresome to go through a list of the various
forms of artistic expression; enough has been said
to show the necessity for a free body, sensitive to
respond to, quick to obey, and open to express the
commands of its owner.

XVI.

TESTS

ADOPTING the phrase of our forefathers, with all its
force and brevity, we say, “The proof of the
pudding is in the eating.”

If the laws adduced in this book are Nature’s
laws, they should preserve us in health and strength.
And so they do just so far as we truly and fully obey
them.